Delran shuts out Robbinsville on homecoming night

ROBBINSVILLE — Irving Fryar saw improvement in his Robbinsville squad in Friday night’s 21-0 loss to Delran on Homecoming Night — but he knows that the Ravens cannot overcome mistakes at critical times.

“We’re not that good, and because we’re not that good, when we make mistakes we’re not talented enough to overcome them,” said the first-year head coach. “Now can we win football games, yeah, but we’ve got to play good football and we’re not playing good football.”

The visiting Bears scored on a pair of German Mendoza touchdown runs and quarterback Steve Lawlor connected with Zach Bautz on an 18-yard bootleg pass in the third quarter as Delran raised it’s record to 4-1.

“They have a lot of experience there — a lot of history in their school,” said Fryar, when asked about the play of Mendoza and Lawlor. “We’re starting over again with the new regime so to speak. There’s a lot of things we’re trying to undo so we can do some new things. Again, it just boils down to execution and doing what we need to do and doing it the right way.”

The Ravens were led by senior Chad Scott, who ran for 128 yards on 23 carries. The loss was the third straight for Robbinsville, which fell to 1-4.

After the two teams traded punts in the first quarter, Robbinsville had the game’s first sustained drive — taking the ball from their own 34 to the Bears’ 11. Scott carried the ball on eight of nine plays, gaining 58 yards, but was stuffed for a one-yard loss on fourth-and-three as Delran took over on downs.

The Ravens first big miscue came in the second quarter when Delran’s Malik Thomas stepped in front of a pass at the Ravens 23 yard line and ran the ball back to the 13. Robbinsville came up with a big stop — forcing a Bears’ fumble that was recovered by Kyle Gildner.

But a short punt gave the Bears the ball on the Ravens’ 28 and six plays later Mendoza scored from eight yards out with 32.4 seconds left in the first half. Delran had a miscue on the extra point and went into the half leading 6-0.

That lead grew to 14-0 on the opening drive of the third quarter.

After forcing the Ravens to punt, Mendoza had a pair of runs for first downs and on third and 12 from the Robbinsville 48 Lawlor connected to a wide open Bautz down the Delran sidelines for a 30-yard strike.

The two connected on the next play, with Lawlor running to his right and then lofting a ball to Bautz in the back of the end zone. He then connected with tight end Troy Martino for a two-point conversion.

“We competed better this week than last week but as I was saying, we’re not a talented team,” Fryar said. “We don’t have a bunch of great athletes on our team where we can overcome mistakes. In order for us to win we have to do it right 90 percent of the time, 95 percent of the time.”

Fryar couldn’t resist a dig at one of his ex-NFL rivals.

“We’re just not getting it done right now,” the former Eagles receiver said. “But we’re one game better than the Giants.”